Sermon – December 23, 2018 (Audio & Print)

Dear friends, grace to
you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

I have shared with people
recently how these last couple of years have been a rich season of ministry for
me as I have had the joy of baptizing the babies of young women I’ve known
since they were high school or college students, young women who babysat my
boys when they were little. One of the great blessings of staying put in a
congregation – which I hope to do for some time to come – is developing these
kinds of relationships over the years. There’s something extra special in
seeing these young women who temporarily mothered your children for a few hours
as babysitters have children of their own. Not only are the babies a delight,
but there’s a beautiful transformation that takes place as these young women
become these loving, tender mothers.

I’ll bet most of you have
had similar kinds of joys in your lives as you’ve watched friends or loved ones
or your own children become parents. It is a joy, to be sure. But it is often a
complicated joy, isn’t it? For one, seeing people you knew as kids suddenly
holding a baby in their arms reminds you how old you’re getting! I know that
some of those women whose babies I’ve baptized were your Sunday school
students. I know that some of their
parents were your Sunday school students! So, while it is a joy, it is a
complicated joy as you are reminded of the swiftly passing years. These babies
can be a complicated joy for those who, like dear Elizabeth for most of her
life, have been unable to have children of their own. They are a complicated
joy even for the mothers themselves. It is not uncommon for new moms to weep
while holding their new babies – not just happy tears, and not just because of
all the hormones running loose in their bodies, but because they feel
overwhelmed and scared to death over the immense responsibility they now feel
as they hold that little human in their arms.

Our gospel reading for
this fourth Sunday in Advent paints a picture of joy. It is one of the most
beautiful, tender moments you’ll find anywhere in the Bible. Mary travels to a
town in the hill country outside of Jerusalem to visit her aunt Elizabeth. Mary
has heard from the angel Gabriel that her elderly aunt is expecting a baby.
Mary, of course, is now expecting a baby of her own. As Mary enters the house
of her Uncle Zechariah and her Aunt Elizabeth, the child in Elizabeth’s womb
leaps for joy! John the Baptist is already doing his job of pointing to Jesus!
Elizabeth is full of joy too! To be more specific, she is filled with the Holy
Spirit! She gushes with Spirit-filled joy upon seeing Mary, saying, “Blessed
are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” Like the child in
her womb, Elizabeth also knows who the baby is that Mary is carrying: “And why
has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Elizabeth
praises her young niece for trusting in God, saying to her, “Blessed is she who
believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the
Lord.” Mary is full of joy as well. So much so that she bursts into song.

It is a scene of great
joy, but it is a complicated joy. For while part of the motivation for Mary to
come to her aunt and uncle’s house in the hill country is to see her pregnant
Aunt Elizabeth for herself and probably to help as one of her midwives, it is
also true that it was probably a pretty good time for Mary to get out of
Nazareth. Once Mary started showing, there would be all kinds of rumors going
around. It wasn’t that long ago in our own country when, in order to avoid
scandal, pregnant teens would go off and spend a few months at a home for unwed
mothers. The embarrassed parents would concoct some story about how so-and-so
were doing to stay with relatives for a while. Part of Mary’s motivation, then,
surely was to avoid some of that scandal. If she was out of sight and out of
mind for a few months, the math surrounding the dates of her wedding and her
delivery date would be a little more fuzzy. People would be less likely to
figure things out. This time with Elizabeth was a joy, no doubt about it, but
it was a complicated joy.

It was complicated for
Elizabeth too. For while she was no doubt thrilled to be expecting a child in
her old age, she also probably had to endure the snickers and knowing smiles of
people who were surprised to find out that their elderly priest and his wife
were still…active in that way. More seriously, having a child now would also
have been a sad reminder of all those lost years when she was younger and had
more energy to do things with her child, when she might have expected to live
long enough to see her child marry, perhaps even to become a grandmother –
something that surely wouldn’t happen now. It was a joy, but it was a
complicated joy.

I’m sure both Mary and
Elizabeth had that glow that expectant mothers get. They experienced great joy
over the children they carried in their wombs. But the source of their joy goes
even deeper than that. When Elizabeth greeted her niece, she not only said
“Blessed is the fruit of your womb,” but “Blessed
is she who believed.” Their joy came through believing in God’s promises. It
came through trusting in what God was up to in their babies. Their joy came
through faith.

In a beautiful sermon on
these passages from Luke, Martin Luther said that there are three miracles in
this story. The first is that God became a man. The second is that a virgin
conceived. The third is that Mary believed it! “The last of these,” Luther
wrote, “is by no means the least.”

We gather here today on
Christmas Eve Eve. It is a time of great
joy for many of us. We are nearing the end of our season of Advent waiting – in
fact, by the end of this service we’ll be singing “Joy to the World.” We
celebrate over these next several days with feasts of great food. We exchange
gifts. We enjoy twinkling lights and fun music and great movies. We enjoy being
with friends and loved ones. It is a
time of joy.

But it’s a complicated
joy, isn’t it? Because real life doesn’t just stop for all the festivities. In
some ways, the struggles of life become even more intense. If money was already
tight, you really feel the squeeze. If you were already missing someone, you
miss them even more. Time with loved ones can be a joy, but they can also open
up old wounds. All those feasts can be a delight, but some are quietly praying
that loved ones will stay sober through it all. If you or a loved one are
facing a debilitating or life-threatening disease, you don’t get a break from
that just because it is almost December 25th.

Our lives are
complicated. Even those who seem to have it all, those who seem to have it all
together, those who look so polished in their Christmas cards and Facebook
posts, are almost certainly facing some kind of struggles, even if you can’t
see them. That’s just how life is, for all of us. It is the reality of life in
this fallen world.

But these two lovely
women in our gospel reading preach beautifully to us this morning. Mary and
Elizabeth point us to where we can find joy in this midst of our complicated
lives. They point not to themselves and their maternal glow, though that is
certainly a joy. They point to the children they carry. They point to the
grapefruit-sized prophet, who was coming to prepare the way of the Lord, who
already now was leaping for joy in the womb as his Lord drew near. They point
to the berry-sized savior, who was coming to scatter the proud and lift up the
lowly, who was coming to fill the hungry with good things, who was coming to
fulfill God’s promises by bringing mercy and salvation.

The deeper source of joy
Mary and Elizabeth point us to is the joy that comes from believing that these
babies are being born to accomplish something for us. It comes from trusting
that they have come so that we would know God’s presence in our lives, so that
we would know God’s salvation, his mercy, his love. It comes from faith that
God is with us, even when our lives are complicated.

It was a great miracle
that God became a human being in Jesus. It was a great miracle that a virgin
conceived. It was a great miracle that Mary believed it!

May God do a miracle in
you today by sending his Holy Spirit to stir your heart to faith in what he has
done for you through these babies, so that even in the midst of your
complicated life, you would know this joy.

For it was faith in what God was up to in Jesus that made John leap for joy in utero. It was faith that God was
fulfilling his promises that made Elizabeth exclaim in joy with a loud cry. It
was faith that God was with her, faith that God had looked upon her with favor,
that gave Mary not only the strength to carry out her calling, but the joy to
sing while she did so.